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‘I do travel quite a lot for craft fairs and markets,’ she said. They began walking again. ‘The odd thing is that I kind of thought I had put down roots. The few years before I met you I was living with my Gran. She had a cottage in Looe, in Cornwall. Tiny little two up two down thing, but it was lovely being there. I was having a nightmare at home with my mum and Gran stepped in and offered me her spare room for a bit.’ A wistful smile rose on her lips. ‘It turned into more than just a bit. I found work at some of the local hotels and restaurants and I started saving up to go to college.’

The familiar, dull ache when she thought of her grandmother and the cottage on the Cornish coast that had been home for a time, just after her mother finally moved in with one of her squeezes instead of moving on to the next one the way she usually did. A loathsome car salesman called Gordy who had wandering hands and who made Ella’s skin crawl. No way was she living there. If that was what was going to pass for normal family life, she’d much preferred her mother’s unplanned absences, thanks very much. The cottage had been the one place where, for those interim few years, she’d felt grounded and secure.

She’d felt able to commit to a college course with her Gran behind her and a sense of steadiness at last, a place to stay during the holidays. She’d long loved the sea, right from her sporadic visits as a small child and her love of the coast had never left her. She’d even begun to think she might stay there herself when her course finished, perhaps do some waitressing to support herself while she tried to get her dreamed-of jewellery business off the ground. Her Gran had been full of encouragement.

He was watching her, sharp interest on his face.

‘What about when your course finished? Are you still based there now? How come you aren’t still living with your Gran? I don’t remember you mentioning her last time we met.’

She shook her head.

‘I never mentioned a lot of things last time we met,’ she said. She took a deep breath. ’She died nearly a year before I met you. She’d been ill for a while, it turned into pneumonia and she was just too weak to fight it off.’

How desperate Ella had been for her to fight. Yet still she’d slipped away. And security and love had slipped away with her. Ella had come to the conclusion that she wasn’t meant to have that kind of life. She could count on herself and that would have to do.

‘I’m really sorry,’ he said, and when she glanced at him she could see he meant it. ‘You should have said.’

She was long-practiced at glossing over the past. It wasn’t even that hard anymore.

‘It was a fling, Tom,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t about to give you my life story when I knew we only had one night. We were living in the moment, remember? The whole point of it for me was to have fun, not work through my grief and family issues. Can you imagine if I’d started in on that – you’d have run a mile.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he said, his tone indignant enough to make her look up. ‘You make me sound like I was just after sex.’

She laughed out loud at that.

‘Wake up and smell the mulled cider, you idiot,’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that exactly what both of us was after?’

****

A slow walk back to the hotel, the cold really biting in the air now. She could see the moisture in the headlamp beams as they crossed the road and the grit crunched beneath her feet. The what-next hung in the air between them, so strong she could almost feel it. She’d made it crystal clear to him. She had life rules. The steam room encounter had been no more than a slip. And this would be no more than dinner. Yet still she wondered if he would make a move or if this would really be an end. A proper end to them this time.

He walked with her up the stairs and through the lobby, both of them having collected their key cards at reception on the way past. No going their separate ways in the lobby. Her pulse rate was going crazy as she walked up the curving staircase, the surroundings paling because of her heightened awareness of him next to her.

Her door came first.

She stopped outside, key card in her hand, and turned to smile at him, trying to make it an arms-length breezy friendly smile, not a come-in-and-jump-my-bones one.

‘Thanks for a fun evening,’ she said. ‘It was good to see you again.’

‘You too,’ he said. She looked up at his easy smile, trying to imprint it on her brain so she could replace the previous memory with this older version of Tom. The same molten grey eyes but less of a starting-out-in-life sparkle in them. Instead, this version of Tom was broader, stronger and more serious.

He was close enough that one small movement would be enough for him to pull her against him or for her to step in and kiss his cheek perhaps. If either were to crack it would be him. She was sure of it. She was the one who’d left that morning by the sea, not him. She had the stronger will. Yet still he made no move. Anticipatory tension hung in the pause between them. It was so strong she could almost feel it crackle. Finally she could stand it no longer and turned to slide the key card into the lock.

‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend,’ he said from behind her.

She gave him a parting smile.

‘Safe journey,’ she said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

The lock clicked and she opened the door. With every slow motion moment that passed she expected him to make his move, reach out, tug her back, and then…who knew how the night would end. And then the door was closed against her back and she was alone in the dark hotel room.

Alone except for her stupid pride, of course.

CHAPTER SIX

Tom stared at the polished wood of the door with its glossy scarlet number plate, and shoved away the hideous plummeting sensation deep in his abdomen. It was that same desperately sinking feeling he remembered from five years ago, but this time it had an added twist of triumph because he hadn’t been the one left behind while she walked away. There had been a moment back there when to kiss her would have been so easy. The decision was within his control, his choice not to go any further. He’d wanted to redress the balance and now he’d done exactly that.

Dodged a bullet there, he was sure of it.

He walked down the passage and rejoined the stairs. Up to the top floor and his own suite where a fire had been lit and subtle lighting switched on around the room. The sitting room with its velvet sofas was the epitome of opulent luxury. But it could have been a broom cupboard for the amount he noticed it.

Triumph was a pretty hollow sensation, it turned out, when you’d won it by playing safe. He’d walked away because she walked away last time. Because his life now didn’t allow for it. Because it could only ever be a couple of days.

None of those reasons seemed remotely significant now.

****

After the steam room she’d thought it was a forgone conclusion how the night would end, despite the way she’d knocked him back afterwards in the shower. Had he been waiting for her to make a move? Was that what this was about? He’d taken her at her word then, decided to respect her choice not to let this second encounter end up in bed.

Or after an evening in her company had he now decided she looked a whole lot better looking back? She’d forced him to go out with her instead of eating a civilised meal in the fabulous restaurant. Her plans, apart from waitressing here and there, barely scanned into the following week, while his pretty much took him the full way up to retirement. She still didn’t fit in with his life and it was a hundred times more obvious now than it had been back then. She stared at her face in the bathroom mirror, cheeks pink, teeth gritted, barely able to stand still with unrequited tension. And finally, unsure what the hell she intended to say or do, knowing only that she would drive herself mad within the space of ten minutes if she didn’t at least ask the question and find out what he thought of her, she crossed the room at speed and threw open the door.

He stood inches away from her, knuckles upraised in a mid-knock of thin air. She caught her breath.

‘You see,’ he said, holding her gaze steadily with his own. ‘Fate.’

He moved at the instant she did, and then his arms were around her, his mouth crushed against hers, and she sank her fingers deliciously into his hair.

****

The kiss was a visceral moment for him, a burning uprising of suppressed desire for her, filled with five years of comparisons, five years of remembering her when the whole point of dating (which he’d done to some excess for a while there) had been to keep things forgettable. He realised now how laughable the idea of leaving her in the past really was. A part of him was still lying in that bed, looking in disbelief at that opposite empty pillow.

It was her. It always had been her. That maddening feeling of unfinished business when he’d been on the cusp of life.

He’d forgotten the way she curled her hands around his neck and that she liked to pull her fingers through his hair. His stomach simmered at the feel of it.

The way her body responded to his touch, his kiss, felt like slaking a thirst that she hadn’t known existed. Yet maybe there was a part of her, deep in her subconscious, that had known all along the inherent danger in this moment. The part of her that had told her not to talk to him in the lobby, not to have coffee with him, not to have dinner, to try and backtrack after the steam room. She hadn’t listened. Resolve was fuelled by self-preservation and it had diminished in strength with every moment she spent with him.

Too late, she recalled in all its full clarity her state of mind as she headed for the station five years ago. She had known she was walking away from him because she was too afraid to stay and accept the kick-in-the-teeth rejection that would surely come. She couldn’t bear to hear it from him. And so she made the break herself.

Now it all came back in a flood of memories and delicious sensation.

Her heart hammered, reminding her how in-deep she really had been last time she saw him, and proving that she’d been kidding herself all these years; telling herself it hadn’t been mindblowing, that it was just her memory playing tricks, in the way that in your childhood memories it always seemed to be sunny.

She’d been caught out by her memory playing tricks once too often. It had been easy to convince herself Tom Henley wasn’t the dream she’d thought he was. She had her stupid ill-judgement of her father right there to prove that point. Memories couldn’t be trusted. And going back was a bad idea.

Yet here he was, bucking that trend.

He backed her away from the door at urgent speed and she moved with him blindly, not thinking or caring whether furniture was in the way. His arms slid around her, grinding her against him as if he couldn’t hold her closely enough. One of his hands tangled in her hair, tilting her head back to deepen his kiss and she could taste the faint twist of spiced apple on his tongue. She could feel the press of his erection against her, rock hard, and she ground her hips against him, secretly thrilled that she invoked that acute arousal in him.

Carefully laid safety nets pinged away in her mind. Guards slipped. She could think of nothing except that she was back in his arms.

Her fingers found the buttons of his shirt, the urge to feel his skin against hers so strong that nothing else mattered. She tugged them free, slid impatient hands up the taut warm skin of his chest. Her mind vaguely registered differences, similarities. The faint scent of his aftershave, still the same brand, something fresh that reminded her of the sea. A scent she associated with the salt air of the coast and a time when she’d felt truly happy. He felt broader now, his pecs rock hard, his arms roped thickly with muscle. He must work out.

His hands caught up a twist of her sloppy joe sweater and tugged it over her head. The instant it was gone his mouth groped for hers again, his hands moving to her jeans with unstinting urgency. She found his buttons, pulling at his clothes with an urgent kind of madness, and then the back of her knees hit the edge of the nearest twin bed and she was falling back. The soft velvet of the counterpane against her bare back, his bare skin against her own.

And it felt like she was meant only for him.

****

Naked now, clothes thrown aside randomly around the room, he cupped the firm swell of her breast in his hand, followed it with his mouth, closing his lips over the hard peak of her nipple and teasing gently with his tongue until she moaned and arched her back. He trailed his fingertips lower, tracing the smooth hollow between her breasts, lower still over her flat stomach and between her thighs to stroke softly at her swollen core. Delight surged in his stomach as he felt how wet she was. He slid two fingers inside her, a further spike of desire kicking in as she moaned her pleasure against his neck, then found the swollen nub at the very core of her and circled it slowly with the ball of his thumb, feeling her jump and writhe beneath him as he found a slow rhythm.

She clutched at his shoulders, her head thrown back against the counterpane, exposing the smooth cream of her slender neck for him to kiss. He moved back in surprise as she wriggled from beneath him, batting his shoulder aside, wondering if this was about second thoughts. She scrabbled through one of the open cases, toiletries and clothes flying as she tossed them aside and returned to him with a condom between her fingers. A surge of desire rushed through him at her smile and put paid to any further delay. Wanting to possess her fully, nothing else mattering, five long years of her memory driving him forward, he rubbed the swollen head of his erection against her slick entrance until she was writhing against him with desire, and when he could stand it no longer he thrust forward smoothly to the hilt. The moan of visceral desire escaped his lips before he could stop it.

Forcing himself to move slowly now, building up a delicious friction between them, he tangled his hands in the softness of her hair and took her with long and tantalising strokes until her breathing quickened and her legs curled around his back, her hands sliding down his back to try and push him deeper inside her. Responding to her every movement, he pushed them both towards that delicious pinnacle, taking his time, holding back to keep them hovering there as long as possible until her cries of pleasure pushed him over the edge and he could control it no longer.

Afterward, she lay panting, clutched in his arms, her own fingers digging into his shoulders in a tight grip, his breath deep and hard against her neck. Slowly, the firm stroke of his hand against her climbed down to a soft caress. Her mind began to filter in awareness of surroundings and background sounds.

A continuous high pitched eeee-aaaawww eeee-aaaawww cracked its way into her formerly preoccupied consciousness. It sounded like a donkey on acid.

‘What the bloody hell is that noise?’ Tom whispered softly into her hair.

****

She jerked her head up like a meerkat and gave the room a quick once-over. Tom sat up and rubbed a hand through his hair as she pulled herself off the bed, dragging the sheet along with her, giving him a glimpse of perfect creamy thigh and smoothly curved backside. His stomach began to heat up again just at the sight.

She picked her way across the shoe strewn floor to the corner, one hand holding the sheet against her chest, and righted the table he vaguely remembered knocking over. Next to it was the telephone and she replaced it on the table and put the receiver back. The high-pitched squawking stopped.

Noise removed, he glanced around the room. It looked as if there’d been some kind of explosion in a department store.

‘Bloody hell, what happened in here?’ he said.

He raised eyebrows at her and she tilted her chin up indignantly and folded her arms around the sheet.

‘What do you mean, what happened? We happened.’

‘We didn’t do all this.’

He waved an arm around the room. Every available surface was littered with belongings, make-up, clothes. The opposite twin bed was covered in clothes and he shifted uncomfortably and pulled a trainer out from underneath him.

‘I hadn’t finished unpacking,’ she said defensively.

‘I thought you were staying here for the weekend, not moving in,’ he said as she crossed the room back to him, picking up an armful of clothes as she went with her free hand.

She swatted him on the arm as she passed. The physical contact made him jump, his consciousness was so finely tuned to her every touch that it didn’t seem to matter whether that touch was affectionate or not. Add in the fact that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that sheet and he wanted her again. More urgently by the second.

‘I remember your hotel room back in Devon,’ she said, dumping the clothes on the opposite bed and sitting down next to him, sheet swathed around her body, creamy shoulders exposed that were just made to be kissed. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘That one perfect suit-carrier and matching designer holdall. Everything in its place. I bet you even use the trouser press and laundry service, don’t you?’

He grinned at her good-naturedly, leaning up on one elbow.

‘That’s what they’re there for. Enables you to travel light.’

‘Yeah well, I’m never sure what I’ll fancy wearing until pretty much the moment I put it on,’ she said airily. ‘Makes sense to bring a broad selection.’

‘And are you always this untidy?’

She glanced around the chaotic bedroom.

‘This is not that untidy,’ she said. ‘You’re obviously not used to sharing a room with a woman.’

She had him there. He wasn’t used to sharing. Either a room or his life. For a while after he’d last met her he’d had a run of short relationships. None of them had been serious, not that he had given them the chance to become that.

So the no-second-time rule was well and truly broken and she would just have to work with what she had. Part of her was so busy feeling like jelly from post-shag euphoria that it overshadowed the more sensible part of her that couldn’t believe what she’d gone and done, giving in to impulse over sense. Well, done it she had, and the only option she had now was damage limitation. Communicate a don’t-care attitude and make it clear this wasn’t going to lead any further than it had five years earlier.

‘Don’t be getting any ideas,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at his obvious inability to take his eyes off her. ‘I might have let myself get sucked into your whole ‘loophole’ argument. But hey, it’s Christmas right? I figure I’m allowed a little fun. You could be gone as soon as tomorrow. This is never going to be more than a day or two. So…’ she took a deep breath, stood up, looked down at his amused expression ‘…same as last time. No looking forward or back. This is only ever going to be a fling. No strings, no thinking outside the moment. We enjoy it while it lasts and when it’s done, we go our separate ways.’

She smiled into his gorgeous grey eyes and invested everything she had in the guard she’d honed to perfection over the years. She wasn’t about to lose her heart to him. Not when she’d just about managed to hang onto it the first time. She was even stronger this time around, she was prepared. She’d built herself a career, a future, that didn’t rely on anyone else and which therefore couldn’t be lost or messed with. She wouldn’t be giving up any of that on a whim.

‘Deal?’ she prompted.

Tom leaned forward and grabbed her around the waist, sweeping her into an arc over his body until she was lying on her back on the messed-up bed, and he began to unravel the sheet from her body inch by delicious inch.

‘Deal,’ he said. What else would he say? What else could this ever be? In the New Year he’d be taking on further responsibility, another step in his life plan, no room for impetuousness or rash decisions – he had people relying on him. What the hell else could he do – tell his sick father to stuff it, that the medical practice would have to manage for the first time in fifty years without a Henley at the helm because he wanted to jet out to warzones and charity work?

Just like last time, all she wanted from this was a fling. And just like last time, that was all he had to give.